‘Danny Knows Best’ is a new online viral marketing campaign we have launched. The campaign is aimed at a very specific audience and is very different to anything we have done before. Through this project we want to introduce the Royal Opera House to a new audience and appeal to anyone that has enjoyed mainstream chat shows and reality TV programmes such as Popstar to OperaStar, but hadn’t yet made the next steps to visit the Royal Opera House.

The brief for the campaign was as follows

(i) to create an online viral that raised the profile of opera and ballet to new audiences especially those exposed to our work via the reality TV shows such as Britain’s Got Talent, So You Think You Can Dance, the X Factor, From Pop Star to Opera Star, Maestro, The Choir and The Orchestra

(ii) to introduce the work of the Royal Opera House in an innovative and accessible way and hook people in with an affordable ticket offer

The Danny Knows Best viral is a spoof reality TV chat show, based on the Jeremy Kyle/Jerry Springer format.

Danny, the show’s host, invites his guests to take the stage and tell their ‘real-life’ stories. Through this contemporary format the stories of Cinderella, Romeo and Juliet and Rigoletto are played out. The three TV clips are introduced as ‘I’m a slave in my own home, I want to divorce my family’ (Cinderella), ‘My racist father is holding me hostage’ (Romeo and Juliet) and ‘I’m sleeping with my father’s boss, behind his back’ (Rigoletto)

The content is uncompromising. The TV clips do contain swearing and violence but also, importantly, they do contain comedy and compassion. Like all good talk shows, it features unexpected revelations, big arguments and physical fights, racist provocation, marriage proposals and lie detector tests; it also features all the necessary warnings.

As you can see those people who click on the trailer are sent through to the Danny Knows Best website which features the three films and spoof content. Anyone clicking on the interactive content is immediately sent through to www.roh.org.uk. On this ROH branded site we immediately 'own up' and present the introductory ticket offers for all of the productions in our Autumn Season, including productions like Anna Nicole, Hansel und Gretel and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. You can visit the full Autumn Season here.

We have also created a Trailer/Advert for the TV show, which we have embedded in the Danny Knows Best Facebook page through which we have reached out to all of the reality TV show and other entertainment sites. The trailer/advert was to entice people to see the full 9 minute films. Once the films were recorded and edited, they were then let loose on the world. We seeded the campaign organically throughout the internet and relied on the strength of the content, social media and existing relationships with media partners. And we have timed it to coincide with our annual media promotion with The Sun.

The campaign costs – in essence the creation of the viral – are equivalent to a single production press advertising campaign run on a regular basis at the ROH. We have not spent any money on the distribution as the viral is being distributed organically. Success would always depend on the quality of the content as well as a good knowledge of social networks and our target audience.

There are approximately 1,500 seats available for booking through this promotion offer for a variety of productions, both opera and ballet.

We want to raise the profile of opera and ballet, breakdown perceived elitist barriers and get new people into the building for the first time. Our research tells us that once we can get people in, they genuinely enjoy it.